Tuesday, May 30, 2017

What kind of people would enjoy a sumptuous meal in front of
a starving child and simply say, “Go away kid, you bother me.”? None that I know. What kind of people would deliberately
withhold food and destroy the means of growing food in the context of abundance
surrounded by children reaching out for crumbs from the table and simply say,
“I don’t care?” I don’t personally know
anyone so calloused because I don’t personally know any Israeli Zionists.

Next month, Israel will be celebrating its 50th anniversary
of occupying Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. Is that something of which to be proud?

Since the Six Day War Israel has:

---Demolished
over 48,000 homes in the West Bank and Gaza;

---Confiscated
over 586,000 acres of Palestinian land the West Bank;

---Created
300,000 Palestinian refugees;

---Colonized
the West Bank with over 600,000 Jewish settlers;

---Enacted
over 50 laws that discriminate against Israel’s Arab minority, and

---Established an apartheid legal
system with civil courts for Jewish settlers and separate military courts for 4.5 million
Palestinians, including indefinite detention without trial and a conviction
rate of over 99%.[1]

Why do we Americans, who years ago quit believing in a
“superior race,” continue to support and fund a nation which brags about being
a nation for a superior race? What has happened to the voice of those who
believe there will be peace for all only when there is justice for all? As long as
America continues to insist that the Palestinians are all terrorists and demand
that our friends call them terrorists who are just out to kill Jews, there will
be little hope for peace there or living with a clear conscience here. And Israel will continue to kill, imprison,
torture and steal land and water from the Palestinian nation. Over 800,000
Palestinians have been arrested since the 1967 war Israel celebrates this week.[2]

And, what kind of people would look the other way in the
presence of such injustice. Well, my fellow
Americans, perhaps we all should look in the mirror.

Thomas Are

May 30, 2017

[1] Fifty
Years on…A Call for Liberty and Justice for All, mailchi.mp, 50 Years of Illegal Occupation. May 26, 2017

[2] Mondoweiss,
Letter to President Donald Trump from
Families of Palestinian Prisoners in Israeli Jails, May 24, 2017.

Thursday, May 11, 2017

When I thought I had heard it all, I was jolted to read that
there were nearly 700 “Friends of…” organizations operating in the United
States raising billions of dollars every year for Israel.[1]. Their influence is not limited to fund
raising. They bribe politicians, intimidate the media and threaten academia. They
exaggerate the pain of
Palestinian resistance and insist that Israel is the innocent victim. No matter
what happens, the Palestinians are to blame.

One such organization calling itself “Friends of the Israel Defense Forces” states that their job is to look after the
(Israeli Defense Forces) IDF:

True to that motto, the money this
‘charity’ raises benefits exclusively the soldiers of a foreign country that
has not fought a war longer than 33 days in 40 years and whose primary duties
have been to protect Israel’s illegal settlements, demolish Palestinian homes,
make the lives of ordinary Palestinians miserable, and suppress Palestinian
resistance to its ongoing ethnic cleansing by whatever means necessary.[2]

The irony of this friendship is that it actually does more
harm than good. The old AA adage, “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk,”
makes my point. By any measure, Israel
is drunk with its own arrogance, power and sense of importance. Its future as a
democratic, Jewish only state is little more than an impossible dream in
desperate need of an honest friend to lift up the sober truth. The world will
accept brutality and look the other way in face of injustice, but not genocide.

On the other side of the coin. In spite of what Golda Meir
announced, the Palestinians exist and they are growing. They also have friends.
Millions of friends. I know because I am one of them.

Wednesday, May 3, 2017

It seems no matter what, Israel gets away with it. From the
imprisonment and murder of children, to blockading an entire nation of people, Israel gets away with it. There seems to
be an unquestioned support of Israel that “keeps out eyes shut, our mouths
closed and our wallets open,” no matter what Israel does.[1]
The powerful Israeli lobby makes sure that Israel gets away with it.

A $3.7 billion nonprofit ecosystem
with 14,000 employees, 350,000 volunteers and a paying membership of 774,00.

And what does Israel get for all this investment to
influence public opinion. It gets an American government willing to look the
other way, a news media seldom raising an objection and millions of Christian
Zionist putting a biblical halo over Israel’s atrocities.

But, there is another side to the story. At the founding of
the State of Israel, acts of violence were designed to frighten Arabs into
fleeing for their lives. One of the best documented examples was the village of Deir Yassin. On April 9, 1948, the Stern gang, headed by
Yitzak Shamir, and the Irgun, headed by Menachem Begin, conducted the massacre
of the Arab village of Deir Yassin. Jews
claim 100 people were killed, Arabs say it was 250. The commander of the Haganah, Zvi Ankori
described what he witnessed:

I saw cut-off genitalia and women’s
crushed stomachs. It was direct murder. Soldiers shot everyone they saw,
including women and children. Parents begged commanders to stop the slaughter,
to please stop shooting.[2]

No one denies that most of those slashed to death were women
and children. Jewish terrorist shot people on their homes and threw their
bodies into the streets as a message to neighboring Arab villages. Survivors of
the raid tell stories of Israeli soldiers starting to kill early in the morning
and continuing all day. They killed everyone they saw, including old people and
children. One pregnant woman had her stomach cut open with a butcher’s knife.[3]

Rather than hiding its face in shame, Israel’s leaders
promoted the massacre as a propaganda tool to frighten other villages into fleeing
their homes and leaving them for Israeli Jews to occupy, “free of charge.”

Also in the minds of Americans should be the USS Liberty.

Fifty years ago, this month, Israel deliberately attacked a
US navy ship, killing 34 sailors and wounding 171, machine gunned our life
rafts in the water and did everything it could to sink the USS Liberty. Why would
Israel attack an American ship? To stop
messages from reaching the world that Israel was preparing to invade Syria to
capture the Golan Heights. And to this
day, the lobby prevails. The US Government has done NOTHING to protect or
protest the assault on the Liberty. Israel
has well learned that it can do anything, even kill Americans, and the US will
sweep it under the rug.[4]

No one is safe from Israel’s lobby or its self-proclaimed
“right to defend itself.”

As the father of a mentally disabled son, I not only read
about Nanar Mujahed, I feel her story. Just last week, (April 21, 2017), Israeli
occupation soldiers opened fire on this disabled Palestinian young woman. She certainly
posed no threat to them. Frightened and confused as she was, they even put her
in handcuffs at the hospital. Now, in addition to having a mental handicap,
Manar Mujahed is also paralyzed.[5]

No matter what, Israel gets away with it.

Thomas Are

May 3, 2017

[1]
Filmmaker, Tom Hayes, Quoted by Delinda Hanley in the Introduction to the
fourth “The Israel Lobby and American Policy” conference, Washington, D.C.,
March 24,2017.

[3].Quoted
in David Hirst, The Gun and the Olive
Branch: The Root of Violance on the Middle East, Faber and Faber, 1977) p.
141. Cited in Clifford Wright, Facts and
Fables: The Arab-Isreli Conflict, (London, Kegan Paul International. 1989)
p.19

[4] I urge
you to Google, HOWARD FILMS, LOSS OF LIBERTY. It’s a
history that we should know. To learn
more, Read the book, Assault on the Liberty,
By James Ennes, the officer on deck during the attack. The latest book on this that I have read is Attack on the Liberty, By James Scott,
the son of one of the officers on the Liberty. Again, this is a history that we should know
if we are to understand how the US
defers to Israel,
time and time again.

Thomas L. Are

I preached for forty three years in the Presbyterian Church before retiring. If anyone would ever refer to me as a Liberation Theologian, I would be pleased. I started blogging several years ago to express my political and religious concern for justice, especially justice for the Palestinians.